


how rare and beautiful it is to even exist

by euphoricxdystopia



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Childbirth, Choking, Hospitals, M/M, Mpreg, Panic Attack, Past Relationship(s), Postpartum Depression, Rape/Non-con Elements, Suicide Attempt, YouTube, basically dan trying and phil physically can't, hurt!phil, parent!phan, the ending is actually kind of hopeful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 03:58:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15111341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphoricxdystopia/pseuds/euphoricxdystopia
Summary: Dan and Phil may have had a baby when they shouldn't have, and Dan tries to hold their lives together while Phil breaks apart.Or where Phil experiences the world in a new desaturated light, Dan has to hold onto three lives at once, and they have a newborn.  Somehow when falling in love, they were destined to collide with the solid concret ground eventually, and Dan and Phil have distorted ways of copping with it.





	how rare and beautiful it is to even exist

**Author's Note:**

> contians: soy, milk -- i mean mpreg, depression, a suicide attempt and all that angsty shit to keep me awake at night. see tags for specific tw(s).

It was 4:17 in the morning.

Dan caught the edges of his vision blur into darkly-lit silhouettes of the atmosphere around him. The absence of light swirled like watercolours that ran through the canvas, though only if the painting had been entirely made up of monochrome charcoals, silvers and off-whites.

The room was cold. The sheets that he'd been tangled up in were pushed off one side of the bed, and though he was covered, the absence of anyone beside him brought on that startling feeling of emptiness.

He mumbled out something that vaguely resembled language in his sleep-clouded-like state, and his hand felt as if it was floating when he reached out to fill the space in the bed where there never should've been voidness – it had been that way for months, he reminded himself. His mind was drifting through the watercolours of 4AM, the canvas too murky, too diluted to make the image clear.

Light pooled from under the closed hallway door, stinging his eyes as they adjusted. Airy footfalls ricocheted against the cold, hardwood floor, almost sounding jittery in the way that Dan knew the feet hitting the ground were too quickly stepping, or pacing up and down the hallway.

The spacey sense in his mind started to evaporate. The glossy, dream-like feeling that left him just the slightest hints of warmth had desaturated, and now that his brain was properly awake, he was left with his heart beating frantically into his chest.

The room was still cold when he pushed open the crack in the door and light illuminated through the rest of the bedroom.

Phil had a hand on the wall, the other under his lower abdomen, and it seemed he didn't even notice Dan once the other boy had appeared like a shadow creeping in through the open doorway. Phil's eyes were closed, not in the peaceful way that Dan sometimes pictured and liked to remembered when he couldn't fall sleep.

He looked in pain, head bowed too low, eyes too shut and his breathing was off – which the addition of leaning half-heartedly against the wall, Phil looked pretty bad.

It didn't quite feel like 4AM. It didn't really feel like a time at all.

The other boy must've know he was there, though didn't make any effort to acknowledge his flatmate-and-not-anything-more's presence besides a mumbled, "Dan, go back to bed."

"Tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing, just can't sleep. False contractions, or whatever and it's kinda hurting. I'm fine though." His voice caught, the way it did when he lied – that forcefulness breaking apart as his mouth formed the words his brain repealed against.

Dan bit the inside of his cheek, wandering over to hold Phil's waist as he led the other boy to his own bedroom, taking Phil's arm that didn't really look like it could hold the rest of his body up from the wall much longer. "Jesus, Phil, why didn't you say anything?"

Phil was going to push back, ache away from Dan's touch like the other burned him. He didn't, he wanted to and Dan could feel it. Instead, Phil leaned against him, perhaps he was too tired to fight with Dan right now. That thought worried the latter more than it should've.

"I told you, it isn't bad. They're, like... inconsistent. It's not anything new." Phil said, and maybe Dan truely was just finding every shake, every flinch in Phil's voice to be inaccurate, the way his mind liked to over-analyses things when he wouldn't normally think twice about it. Or maybe Phil, struggling to stand alone in their hallway (or when he was completely fine), just had that effect on him, even when it shouldn't.

"But you're in pain."

"And? I said I'm fine." He shook his head – admittedly, it was more of just a slump against Dan's neck. Underneath, the younger boy felt hot, clammy skin glaze over his own. The small puffs of breath that hit his cheek were too quick, and as Phil spoke, his voice hitched. "It's just –  _more_ , I think, than it had been a few hours ago."

Phil's body tensed, the softest of groans leaving his lips. It sounded like a sigh, though Dan moved the hair from Phil's face to see his eyes and they had gone glassy before he turned his head away, presumably to screw them shut again. "Don't do that," Phil whispered.

Dan's own heart hammered, he felt his pulse beneath his fingers race, dropping his hand from Phil's damp hair. He didn't know how he was still standing up for the both of them, but he was. "Phil, this could be labour. We need to go, alright?"

"No..." Phil grit his teeth, his hand was so interlocked with Dan's that the ends of his nails we're digging into his flesh and probably piercing the skin. It didn't hurt the way Phil's body hurt, but Dan almost wished it did. Guilt poured through him whenever he saw Phil's face scrunch up, and Dan wanted to take it away. He wanted to endure the pain if it meant Phil didn't have to. Was it a healthy thought? Probably not. "I-It doesn't hurt that much. Just wanna sleep."

The hospital seemed safer, where they could pump drugs into his body or circulate vapour through his lungs that could take away this pain that Dan couldn't – but Phil didn't want that. He got panicky and anxious every time they'd go for an appointment, and Dan didn't want to know what Phil's mind would do to itself the time the  _real thing_ happened.

So he stayed with Phil in the apartment, and they sat on the edge of Dan's bed together, and Phil didn't notice that it wasn't his own room.

He was going to hold onto his shaking best friend, tell him beautiful words to overcome the hurt, and cry when this was all over because Phil was giving him the sun, and the moon, and every constellation between the two, and beyond. He would cradle the three of them like he could fix everything in this fucked-up, beautifully chaotic situation.

If Phil wanted that, of course.

* * *

Two hours, thirty-nine minutes and fifty-seven seconds later, the cloudy, fluid perception of time flowing amongst his senses had dissipated – and  _of course_  Dan was counting down to the seconds as if he had any sense of control in his helpless position.

He had screamed, yes Dan had actually  _screamed_  at his fatally-stubborn, definitely in-labour, flatmate and not-partner, because  _Phil, I can't stand here watching it hurt you, please let me–_ but Phil screamed at him too, voice raw and damaged.

"Leave then! I don't need you, get ou–!" The strength to yell at Dan like that came from an agonising mixure between hatred and the ripping convulsion breaking his abdomen in two. He didn't manage to get the whole distorted string of words out, but Dan got the message.

He left Phil alone in his bedroom for three minutes, getting him a pitiful glass of water, and came running back in as he heard the twisted groans start anew after the previous contraction.

"I – I told you, go away." He said as the door slowly opened. Clenched bedsheets, on hands and knees, mumbling words against Dan's pillow as he pressed his face into it. That's was Dan took in during half a second.

"I can't leave you." Maybe it was something instinctual, maybe something more, but Dan didn't have anything in him to make the choice to turn around and walk out.

"But I need you to."

Dan wondered if it hurt Phil, like it hurt him. Not the physical sense that Dan's non-bearing biology would never understand, but everything else. Dan and Phil, having a child from lonely nights and expired love. He wasn't sure why they had this routine, the meaningless (and sometimes angry or sad or hurt or lustful) lonely sex, but they did and it was the only thing about their old relationship that ever stuck. Dan wondered if Phil remembered more than that: perhaps why they ever were in love with one another in the first place, or maybe the reason it hurt so badly when they couldn't anymore? Did it ache in Phil's chest the same way it did in Dan's every time he realised there was a difference to 'couldn't anymore' and 'stopped'?

Dan was still clinging onto it, that feeling of whatever that allowed him to live in the lost love he once felt for the love of his life. He couldn't escape it, he didn't know how anyone could just  _stop_  and simply  _let go_.

"And I can't leave you, Phil." Dan whispered, feeling wetness well in his eyes and Phil moved as far away from him on the bed as he could. He didn't fight Dan anymore on that, and he was relieved because the worst thing Phil did after that was refuse his gaze. He could live with that. There were so many things he couldn't, but being ignored by Phil wasn't one of them – it was sort of what Dan expected; the norm, he guessed. Funny how he was always so used to it, but he still always used to loved him... and then after that, too.

* * *

Phil inhaled sharply, the warm thickness of blood and fluid ran down the inside's of his legs and he felt thrown into a world where everything was happening in high volume, fast-forward and over-exposure.

Phil didn't stand up. Instead he collapse onto the carpeted floor, rather than the bed, and wrapped an arm around his abdomen against the excruciation when the waves had gone to a much higher intensity. He still bleed as Dan practically carried him to the bathroom, leaning all of his weight on Dan's shoulders, too aware that every movement didn't agree with the amazing combination of contractions, sleep deprivation and the very constant sickly nausea burning through his throat.

Phil broke against the cold tiles once they reached the bathroom, and Dan held his chest and upper body in his lap as the other grit his teeth and stifled a groan from the convulsing pain. This wave was longer, and faster than the other contractions had been, making Phil clench his fists into Dan's shirt, and muffle a sob against his chest as they lay there on Dan's bathroom floor, Phil's skin a cold sweat, but feverish underneath Dan's fingertips.

As the pain in his stomach reached a tolerance that was no longer so bearable, he heard the deep, pained scream leave his lips – more so bounce of the tiled walls, amplifying the searing headache behind Phil's eyes. He subconsciously bit the inside of his cheek to keep any of this from getting much worse, and thankfully the pure metallic taste hitting his tongue and coating his teeth wasn't as bad as the ripping and clenching of his insides – he hardly felt the gash he'd done to himself.

Dan noticed, however, as that metallic liquid – that the brunet said was blood, though Phil didn't seem to realise – was  dribbling down his lips and chin, onto Dan's on lap.

"Phil, don't. You're going to hurt even more if you do that."

"'S okay, I don't mind. Leave it alone."

The other boy's body went ridged as he held Phil, who dropped his head low and Dan wondered if he could even hold it up on his own anymore. Somehow Dan couldn't touch Phil's face, he couldn't force his own mouth to make sounds in that moment where everything felt like gravity was pulling them both down too harshly. Dan couldn't look at Phil because he couldn't give the person he'd created the life they had together with any kind of solace or relief when he needed it the most – not here, not during 6AM in their bathroom, not when Phil was hurt, and Dan was absolutely fucking helpless.

"Why are you here?" Phil mumbled, to which was muffled by Dan's chest, each vibration and soft sound from the voice reminding the latter that he couldn't lose himself in his own fear – not right now. When Phil and their newborn child – his family, whether Phil liked it or not – were both safe in his arms, he could think about all the things that he was afraid shitless about. He and Phil would have the world by then – one with rose-pink delicate skin, and tiny fingers and toes, and beautiful wide eyes – and, somehow, everything else – like this, when it was all over – would seem less scary than having the whole world cradled in his arms.

And until then, he needed to hold his best friend, whisper nothing but meaningless phrases to help him possess the power to do the strongest thing he's ever had to do, and love him (whether he had the right or not to do so) for every second of pain Phil will endure to bring Dan the greatest thing that will ever happen to him in his entirety of a life.

He didn't remember speaking that out loud.

"Don't say that,"

"It's true." Dan said instantly. Given their past, their life, their future, their child – Dan knew he loved Phil simply because he was the one Dan got to share it all with, he was the one giving Dan everything in the world.

Phil didn't see it that way.

"We're nothing, Dan." He said through damage vocal cords. The weird thing was, Phil was still clutching onto Dan, but in a way that suggested he forgot he was in the first place.

Somewhere out there, God was smiling down cruelly at the patheticness.

"Don't pretend you love me. You feel guilt and burden, and all  _I_  feel anger. God – I'm so fucking mad at you, Dan. We work together, we share a flat, we fuck sometimes because we're horny and bored, it never meant much until we knew we couldn't handle everything that came after. We made a mistake, and you covering it up, calling it beautiful and a miracle or ' _the world_ ' – that isn't love."

"Then what is it, Phil?"

"...Nothing significant."

"What the fuck is this feeling so intense it makes me feel so hurt by watching you like this? What is it then, the  _need_  to protect a life that isn't even born yet, someone that I haven't meet? I would kill, and die, and live for two people in the beat of a heart, and yet that isn't love?"

Dan decided if it truly wasn't, nothing was.

Phil's reply was to scream into the other's chest, and grasp at the thin fabric of Dan's t-shirt as blood ran down from his inner thighs. The pearl white tiles were now tainted putrid vermilion and it felt like living in a horrific version of reality when he reached for his abandoned phone and choked out words to an operator that weren't anything but, "God, we need help please, something's wrong. I don't know – I think – he's dying, they're dying!"

* * *

Baby girl Quinn Kathryn was born two hours later, and didn't have a last name for two days.

("Phil, you have to sign it."

"No! I can't! I don't want my name on the certificate. I don't want  _it_  to have my name."

"She's your daughter, she  _has_  to have your name."

"No! It's not taking my name! I said no!"

"Fine." So Dan crossed out the last bit of her name and messily wrote his own after her's.)

She was skin and bones, weighed near to nothing and, for the first critical hours, didn't have the ability to breathe on her own. She was born dead, and that was the scariest moment of his life.

A nurse performed tiny, two fingered CPR on the tiny baby girl, with tiny tubes connected to her body. Dan's eyes didn't stop spinning, the adrenaline was mixing with his veins in an incoherent kind of way where the operating theatre spilled like oil paints, and Phil's glassy eyes multiplied, and the nurse that resuscitated his baby blended into the background of the awful scene. He heard the echoes of wailing, muffled by ears that were underwater – but perhaps it was only a dream, something he wanted to hear. Because his baby couldn't breathe yet, his baby was born dead.

The people in coats shouted things at each other like 'haemorrhaging', and 'asphyxiation' and Dan knew was screaming, too.

He watched the nurse on the far end of the room press her fingers into his baby's so very fragile and delicate chest, again and again and again – until Dan was shoved away by the people grabbing his arms and pushing his chest.

"W-wait – what are you...? Stop! Please, are they okay?"

He wore the floor in outside in the hallway, ran his hands too many times through his hair that it started falling out in stands, and then rang Phil's mum to let her know he killed her son ("I-I don't know, oh God. He was bleeding, and I-I... I stood watching Quinn. S-She wasn't awake, th-they both were dead! What if they're dead!? Oh God, I did this to him, I-I killed them both!) He couldn't breathe or stand straight for forty minutes, and Kathryn was sobbing, listening to him have a panic attack that lasted the entire time.

He wasn't told anything until 30 minuets later when a doctor told him Quinn was in the postnatal paediatric ICU, and Phil had bled out, but due to the stubborn sheer will to not succumb so early or the desire to live for his daughter, he made it out alive. Dan sank to the floor in something so much more than earth-shattering relief and reckoned they'd both only survived because they'd made it to a hospital after all.

* * *

"Phil, please. Please take her." Dan's voice broke the warm bubble that was their bedroom. Yes, their bedroom, because newborns needed to be kept in the same room as an adult who can feed them, change them, chase away the scary darkness of their dreams – so Dan suggested her cot be place next to both her parents. Phil didn't have anything to say about it, but Dan assumed he didn't care.

Now everything was chaos. It was as if Quinn had discovered the true power of her brand-new lungs and had been at it, non-stop, for over an hour. Phil wasn't much help at all, as the older boy chose to ignore the whole screaming-baby situation by pulling the covers over his head and blocking both her and Dan out.

Dan tried – he was trying so hard to do the things that people did when they loved their child, but it wasn't working and his heart was falling apart. That's what it felt like, at least, whenever he thought about this moment in time. Snuggling the wailing baby next to his bare chest, rocking her soothingly back and forth, and trying to push a bottle to her mouth, though she just wasn't going feed – those things weren't taking away any of her pain that no week-year-old baby should ever know, and Dan was breaking.

During some part through the worser half of the hour, Dan cried with his child too, standing between her crib and the bed, half-sobbing half-shouting at Phil to get up and hold his child. Dan needed to see if the bond between a bearing-parent and a child would do anything to help this immensely distressed baby, but Phil wasn't moving. Not even his head peaked up from the blankets.

The other boy wasn't sleeping, anymore. He hadn't been for days, neither of them had because of Quinn's 24 hour constant care. But with Phil, it was something more. He hadn't so much as touched her once since she was born, Dan was quite possibly the only parent she knew right now. And yet, with Dan doing all the care-taking, Phil was also the one that didn't sleep at night.

"You have to get up, I need you to hold her for a minute, please!" Dan was sure he was going to drop her. He was going to leave her head unsupported, her blanket loose, her nappy pinned wrong, her fragile little body too cold, because he was so fucking alone – and had been for the past first week of their child's life – that it had become impossible now, for him to do this. He was going to do something wrong, it was destiny, but somehow with Phil next to him in his life, the other boy could make everything imperfect right again. They were a team, and could do this if they both  _tried_ , but Phil wasn't – he wasn't moving from the bed he'd been in for three days, he hasn't gone as far as to look at his child twice, he left Dan to do the most significant thing in his life that he'll ever do –  _alone..._ where Dan and Phil haven't as simply watched TV alone before they started living together.

"I don't want to hold it." Phil mumbled, not even pretending to be asleep, because how could he even  _remotely_ fool a soul? Everyone in the building had to be awake, and Dan was preparing himself for the police to come take Quinn away with red and blue lights in the darkness before the sun rose. He wasn't sure if that was how the law worked – but she had a failure, someone who couldn't so much as keep her calm correctly, and an absent soul of a human being who couldn't stand to look at her, as fathers.

His mind suddenly believed maybe she  _should_  be taken from them.

It's the first time he thinks he's had this thought, when he's  _this_  conscious, and  _this_  much in love with a baby he's known for 168 hours, but Dan's dark mind wanders to darker places and it tells him they never should've had a child.

It breaks him, because Phil is broken; and their child will not be further off from her parents, if she wasn't completely damaged by Dan's unstable incompetent abilities and Phil's apathetic love already.

Every second he thinks more about it, he wonders if recently the thought had always been there, and he wonders if it's becoming more unnoticeable – just like the way Phil had moulded into everything he wasn't –, or if it's obvious to anyone who bothered to look from the outside in. Did it look as if it was killing him piece by piece when he subconsciously regrets the decision to raise a child like this?

"You can't do this to me. You can't do this to your  _daughter_. We need you, so for the first time since we found out, act like you care about me – no, you're child, at least. Just – just take her for a second, I can't do this without you anymore. I'm going to go  _insane_ , Phil." Over the sound of shrieking cries, Dan's voice repealed against the walls, reaching a spot where Phil felt it in his spin. "Please, can you take Quinn?"

Either way, the boy that cocooned himself within layers and layers of blankets, move slightly upward and sat up along the headboard.

He looked at Dan's tired, warm eyes and when he didn't say anything at all, Dan took the unspoken answer as hope that Phil was going to try this.

Dan came to sit gently on the bed, still rocking a shrieking Quinn to his chest, but slightly moved is hands as Phil hesitently reached out. Dan so carefully passed her to her other father, so gently, as if he was to make one wrong movement, the baby would shatter like glass – or perhaps Phil would, maybe Dan himself.

Once Quinn was fully laced within Phil's delicate arms, she jolted at the sudden change of position. Phil looked no better off; he was terrified, his eyes light up like stage lights, and his pupils couldn't focus on what to absorb. The tiny flailing of her hands? The stunches of her closed eyelids? The infinite screaming erupting from her mouth?

"Take her back," Phil said, though his hands remained immensely still, like they'd become frozen in place from the collision of fear, and alarm he felt. Maybe there was something else in Phil's range of desolate emotions breaking down the monochrome grey walls inside his mind, though Dan wasn't sure.

"She needs you. She's just scared." Dan whispered, stoking the back of his fingers along her fuzzy head. Against the bed headboard, Dan shoulder's leaned along Phil's, bare skin creating raw, damaged heat between them that had been dead and frost-bitten for what felt like centuries. This was the most amount of physical contact they'd had since Quinn's birth, despite sharing a bed, sharing a home, sharing a life. The feeling sent exhilaration down Dan's veins, and he wanted more – he didn't want sex, but he wanted Phil and he wanted to be loved. Withdrawal from it made his chest tighten, and his eyes glaze over, and yesterday he started crying on the bus because stupid Ed Sheeran and Beyoncé were singing about a future he knew he didn't have.

But tonight, the spark had been lit again; it was  _ignited._ If Phil ached for everything they ever had together, he showed it by making sounds that sounded like suppressed whimpers and shaking breathes. Dan wasn't close enough to hear his heartbeat, but somehow he knew Phil's was hammering inside his ribcage. The baby soothed in his hands, melting into hazy sleep, listening to that pulsing rhythm she'd known as the first lullaby she'd ever listened to.

"Okay, now take her back." Phil breathed, closing his eyes shut and struggling to get ahold of the serenity that coated the atmosphere now that all that could be heard was their three aligned breaths,  _in and out._

Dan swallowed forcefully, the painful feeling of sobs stuck in his throat, while the airy sensation of, not falling, but dying in love laced his head.

However, he wasn't going to push Phil any further, nor do that to himself.

"Okay."

* * *

Quinn didn't sleep at all, and that wasn't their only mess. The child wasn't gaining weight, her pallor was sickly and Dan couldn't remember what silence sounded like after he'd been listening to the ear-bleeding screams and shrieks of Quinn's lungs for the past four days now.

Phil had deserted him a while ago, locking himself in the bathroom, gripping the sides of his head and closing his eyes shut.

Dan watched the door agonisingly as this was the longest time Phil had been out of bed, and he didn't know to call ' _moving after three weeks from the bed and shutting oneself into the bathroom for thirty minutes'_  progress, or not.

Dan, surrendered by the hysteria itself, stood in their bedroom, keeping an eye on both the baby and Phil – well, the locked door, but he heard little shuffles and bumps from inside every few minutes, so he counted making sure Phil was still alive in there 'keeping an eye on him'.

His attention was pulled between the two as the screaming child went limp in his arms. He still bounced on the heels of him feet, stroking her face. The skin was feverish to the touch, she felt a lot like Phil, though one was someone who spend every living moment under the thickest duvets and blankets, while the other was a three-week-old who's immunity system, lungs, brain, heart and bones were still strengthening. She was three weeks old, she couldn't fight off disease! She didn't know how to hold her head up, how to focus her eyes, how to communicate, and yet here Quinn was unknowingly dying right in Dan's arms because she wasn't strong enough. He hadn't given her the chance to fight for herself, he was useless and couldn't keep his daughter alive past three weeks.

He needed Phil. Not the one that was terrified of holding his own child, or the one that couldn't bare to look at her, or the one that hated Dan for forcing him into a life that he couldn't cope with. No, Dan wanted the one that loved his family, that couldn't go a day without showing Dan he was loved. The one that had the courage to try, and the one that promised months ago _, 'we're going to be perfect. There's no one else I would rather do this with. We can be brave together.'_

He was shaking, half-looking half-pleading with the door as if it had the power to reveal someone that was so excited with the idea of being a parent that he'd danced around the living room with Dan to, 'Can't Help Falling in Love' like they did seven months ago. They weren't together, they weren't soulmates, they were in a fucked up situation because Phil's inability to keep track of birth control, the heat of the moment and lonely desperation altered their lives forever – but they were in love, at that point in time. Dan still very much was, and that's why it was so fucking difficult now, where the love of his life can't stand to touch him, nor look at their very own daughter, nor open the fucking bathroom door.

Dan ran two fingers down Quinn's red cheek and swore. He was also crying, but no one in the house ever seemed to realise, Dan included. It just sometimes happened, and Dan just sometimes let it.

"Phil, we need to take her to the hospital." He said, voice scratchy and unused for the past week beside the occasional, ' _can I get you something to eat? Water, maybe? Phil, please, you haven't eaten in three days_.' This time he knocked on the door, hearing a sudden muffled noise on the other side. "There's something wrong with her."

"Go then," Phil said, and he didn't sound like he cared. The word 'hospital' was used in a sentence with his daughter, and yet he didn't move from the bathroom floor. Truth be told, the coldness of the tiles was soothing, his head against the marble basin eased the tension of too many built-up migraines. He figured water would help him dissolve the pain away, but turning on the tap, bending down to drink was too much.

"No, I'm not leaving you here. Please, come with us." Emotions that he couldn't name, hadn't felt before rushed through his mind at the thought of Phil staying here without himself in the house. Neither of them had left the apartment since Phil was carried away by sirens and flatline machines with Dan next to him the ambulance, and that was the worst thing he'd ever experienced: being the observer in his best friend's tragedy, rather than being the victim himself.

"I'm fine here!" He shouted, too defensively for Dan's nerves not to be set alight. To be fair, Phil never did like hospitals... but that's wasn't the problem.

"Please, Phil." Dan had his face rested against the door frame, the baby hugged close to his chest as if he could share his heartbeat with her. Hell, he'd  _give_  her his heartbeat, if that's what she needed. He'd do it for Phil – the Phil before, and for Phil now – one of the very reason he wasn't going to abandon him now.

"No! I can't take it's screaming!" Phil yelled back through the wood. Dan pictured him curled up against the wall, cradling his head in his hands and hunched in on himself to make himself invisible as humanly possible. "Just go! It makes me wanna –"

Phil cut his words off, Dan tried to turn the knob, and baby Quinn wailed limply in Dan's hands. Phil seemed to begin to say someone he shouldn't, Dan regretted the lock he'd put there six years ago, and Quinn was dying (according to Dan, who wasn't a pediatrician, but fuck you, close enough: a father with parental instinct and the urge to give his life for his daughter... and best friend).

"I'm not leaving you alone."

"Why?!" Phil screamed, he matched the baby's volume. Sounds were imploding within Dan's ears, and he didn't ever have to wonder why Phil was trying to escape the world by hiding in their bathroom, he knew.

Yet still, Dan couldn't empathize, he could never do what Phil had done, was doing, and couldn't mimic the way Phil felt about his own child. Quinn wasn't the only one who was sick, Dan saw that.

"I don't trust you alone."

Phil stayed locked in the bathroom, probably banging his head against the frame several times from what Dan could hear, so he screamed at Phil to stop it, while Quinn screamed because Dan was an incompetent, a shitty fucking father who couldn't keep the people he loved from harm.

Dan rang emergency for the second time in a month.

* * *

YouTube was still the same. Dan expected to come back into a world where people picked apart and analyzed every aspect of his and Phil's tired features, their body language, their speech to see if anything was amiss from the usual 'bro banter' and stupid innuendos. It wasn't like that, no one diagnosed them upon seeing their ghostly sick complexions, or quieter personalities or their sharper cheek bones, jaws and clavicles. As Dan read the chat of the current stream, he found it nauseating that people were pointing out how good or 'sexy' they looked because they'd obviously lost weight. With caring for Quinn and doing a shit job at it, he's been too worried and inevitably felt as if he didn't deserve food (he knows it's fucked-up,  _he's_  fucked-up), and Phil on the other hand throws anything straight back up the moment he swallows –  _if_  he eats at all, that is.

This was so typical, Dan and Phil showing their faces to the world after a month of falling of the face of the Earth that no one was even suspicious, and frankly no one cared. No one noticed the way Phil rarely talk. Or the fact that Dan was constantly looking over at his friend to make sure he wasn't going to run out of the room, cover himself within in the bed, or find the knives Dan had hidden away after the younger boy had gotten a terrifying feelingwhen he watched Phil put butter on bread and stared at the metal and his own veins for too long.

No one knew they'd had a child together. It was a secret for the beginning, just like the most important things in Dan's life. He hid his family, the way he felt about the love of his life, and now the best thing to ever happen to him – and he didn't share it with the world, even though he wanted to scream it so even the moon knew.

It was his and his best friend's –  _their_  daughter's anniversary of living for one month, this was the day, one month ago, she was born and his world caved around exploding fireworks and the sensation of eternity. He was a fucking awful father, but she was the universe to him, and he wanted everyone to know.

But it was a Tuesday to everyone else. Today Dan and Phil were streaming. They had returned after a typical month absence, and everything was the same.

 _"_ _Why am I alive_ _?"_

He wasn't sure why he read it out, just a comment that caught his eye and he couldn't stop the words falling out. There's a sense of uneasy déjà vu, and he vaguely remembers answering the same question before, multiple times –  _hell_ , he even had a video about it back in twenty twelve – though he'll answer it again because the world needs their mix of tension-lifting existentialism and meaningful positivity... to escape whatever this reality was. It wasn't lying, not  _really_.

"Should I get into that one? 'Cause if I do, I'll end up on the floor for about three hours. Oh whatever, he's a simple answer: your life has meaning. ' _Right, so what's the meaning of life?'_ You ask. That was one of the few types of questions I used to asked myself everyday, because it suddenly occurred to me – after uni – there can't  _not_  be a meaning of life, so I started thinking: what the hell am I doing here playing sonic for the seventh hour straight, and not going out there and  _living_?"

The quieter of the two tensed, his hands going slack in his lap next to Dan's larger ones as the other boy's warmth didn't feel like gravity anymore. Maybe it never did, all he knows is that his that his brain chemistry has changed in about thirty seconds and Phil wants something that isn't Dan anymore. He supposed he always does, but that's bad to admit.

"No, but seriously –  _mattering_  is sometime incomprehensible or undefinable, but in a good way. It's changing the world in the most drastic of ways – or the smallest – to do something that will make another human – whether that's yourself or anyone else – so much happier. You are the centre of your own universe, so you have an impact of everything and everyone you meet. You are so significant, that the meaning of life is not defined as something that presents itself as this  _thing_  that you have to fulfil, but rather the  _you_  are the meaning of life entirely – or at least you're the meaning in other people's lives."

His answer was relatively wholesome, something that the watching teenagers struggling with the woes of growing up needed to hear. Deep inside somewhere, his eighteen-year-old self had been told the beautiful words of 'you're the meaning of  _my_  life', and now his present-day self owed it to Phil to remind him everyday that the words were not forgotten by the faded past and everything that came after it. They'd never said ' _I love you_ ', not since their beginning, but maybe, ' _you're the reason I live_ ' is a better phrase. He owed his life to his best friend because Phil existed, and maybe it wasn't a good message, but it was what was real.

Yet the boulder that shattered the ground of cozy memories – of 5AM conversations, of waisting time like it was meaningless, of sharing beds and first-time sex – broke when Phil's monotone voice ripped through the apartment like being shoved into frost-bitten water. It wasn't two-thousand-and-nine, Dan realised. It was ten years too late from their beginning, and things weren't like how they were then.

"I kinda think that's bullshit."

Dan jerked his head to his friend (if Phil  _was_  still that), finding himself in an expression that was the fulcrum between a warning and the feeling of alam. "Phil –"

Phil ignored him because it's what his brain told him to do. It's what he felt – that apathy when it came to the people's online feelings, or Dan's, or,  _hell,_ maybe his own. He rolled his eyes and scoffed, throwing his head back on the couch and started at the ceiling like it was the most interesting thing in the room. " _God_ or whatever higher power you believe in put you here to be  _nice_  to people, and that the whole reason humanity exist? Really, Dan?"

"What? I didn't mean –"

Phil darted his head back around to face Dan. Well, not Dan, but something in the room behind him. His eyes wouldn't focus on what it was (perhaps a plushie, one of Quinn's toys bought by their parents?), but it didn't matter. It wasn't Dan's eyes, and Phil was more than okay with that. That made it easier, but he wasn't quite sure what 'it' was.

He mumbled, mouth covered by his knee that had been brought up to his chest. It was as if Phil didn't realise they were talking to thousands of people from their audience, or if a part of him just didn't even care. "There is no reason for all of it. Life is nothing, really, if you think about it. We are just intelligent organisms that have developed enough to create a society and have adapted within our environment to keep ourself sustainably alive. There is no reason why we are here, no 'meaning of life', no destiny for each of us to achieve. We are here because we survived, and there's nothing else to it."

Dan could almost feel the comments explode, hearing each little sound from the notifications burn within his ears right next to the blood rushing though his head, and the inner voice of his mind scream at Phil to shut up and half shout at himself _, 'how do I fix this?'._ Some of the people watching the stream didn't really respond in words, just jumbled strings of letters because AmazingPhil had undoubtedly told them _'life was nothing'._ His (well, maybe not) Phil had just told forty-thousands people that there wasn't a reason to be alive.

"Guys, he's joking. We haven't switched personalities, think of the calamity! Me,  _Dan_ , everyone's favourite ray of sunshine? The universe would literally implode on itself." He tried to direct the attention away from Phil, for the audience's sake, though also for his friend's. He didn't really know why he was trying, it didn't seem like Phil cared about his borderline suicidal comments; more frighteningly, Phil didn't seem to notice the consequences at all. He resembled someone who didn't really feel aware in the first place, someone lost elsewhere in the sea that was his mind. That glazed look gave it away, and Dan knew the stream was going to end twenty minutes too early.

"My worryingly dark sense of humour and overall existential nihilism might be rubbing off on you, Phil." Dan looked at his best friend that wasn't AmazingPhil, nor just Phil anymore, while the other boy mumbled out a, ' _yeah, maybe.'_

Dan made some excuse that required them both to leave, and despite halfhearted goodbyes and 'thank you's later, Dan slammed the laptop down so hard it shook the table.

"What the  _fuck_  was that?"

* * *

He's asleep when Phil talks to him, though it didn't take much for Dan to wake up.

"Help me," Phil whispered, and Dan looked up at him through slitted eyes and a partly-opened salivating mouth. The older boy pushed his best friend against the headboard, and Dan's body collided with it instantly, stealing all the air in the room away for a half a second.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" Dan said, drawing out the words with a sleep-clouded mind high off the euphoria, spoken in the same hushed tone as Phil's. He parted his mouth, his tongue glazing over his raw, pink lips.

"I need to feel this."

"Phil–"

Phil pressed down hard on his shoulder and neck, shutting Dan up by fusing their lips together, slipping his tongue so far down inside that Dan jolted, making a strange sound and Phil taunted him with his eyes as he broke away.

The kisses moved harshly down his neck, Phil sucking and biting on Dan's skin until he felt raw under the other boy's teeth. He was too lost in the sensation of Phil actually touching, kissing him for the first time in months to remember whatever he was supposed to oppose. Dan had flipped himself over, on all fours as if he were begging and moaned deeply under Phil's touch.

Phil's hand wrapped itself around Dan's throat, stifling another sound surely wanting to escape Dan's body. "Quite." He warned threateningly, voice low and even – probably now that he realised they weren't alone in the apartment. To Dan, it didn't seem possible that a one-month-old baby could understand and process the sound of her parents fucking a door over, but Dan's head wasn't on Earth anymore and he felt like the opposite of clarity to be able to respond.

Phil pushed himself into Dan, lustfully, and together in the horribly dark light of their bedroom, they were completely and eternally each other's – they were the past.

But it got so much more heavier than it had been moments before. The last few thrusts becoming vigorous, almost violent and that's when Dan cried out, screaming 'fuck' too many times against the edge of his throat lodged by Phil's suffocating grip and the sheets.

It wasn't great, and truly it kind of felt awful.

This wasn't the yesterdays Dan remembered.

Phil's nails sunk into his flesh, the skin breaking. The hold he had on the other boys neck wasn't loose anymore, it was constricting – he couldn't get air down his throat, the circulation had been ripped away. The movements were too much, the thrusts too fast, and something so intimate had never felt as terrifying as sex with Phil was making Dan feel right now. All these alarms were blaring in his head at the same time, he could feel every nerve in his body on fire, the blood rush everywhere through his veins, but in his lungs so that he couldn't breathe. It was all so seriously wrong, and for some inexplicable moment caught up in this overload of damaged emotions, Dan couldn't speak. His mouth was laced with cotton, his airways and voice box crushed under Phil's hand pressing him down,  _down_.

And when it was over, everything came crashing back down to earth.

His face was so wet, it couldn't have been from sweat alone. He wondered if it was blood, if Phil had burst a vein that'd broken through his skin, or he'd clawed at his neck so much the flesh tore. Maybe he cried, and that's what it was. His body aches, there's no pleasure at all. There's a release of pulsing, but it feels awful and when did he close his eyes? How long had he been lying still on the bed? How long had is best friend left him here for?

Distantly, the shower was running, but the flow of stream wasn't pooling from outside the doorway and into the bedroom. It was cold,  _freezing_  he began to realised, and the sound of Phil sobbing from in the bathroom was now the only thing he heard. It was the only thing he heard for two weeks.

* * *

"Can you look at me, please?" Dan said, and somehow his words that didn't sound like home, or of life, or of everything at all caused Phil to explode. They'd been fighting over something, insignificant or not – Dan didn't think Phil could remember – but they had, and everything went to shit in a matter of seconds.

"Why the fuck are you here!?" Phil screamed, breaking the drywall. His voice, his eruption,  _he_  was so sudden that Dan didn't know how to react, just stunned like his body had been recoiled into a state he'd never experienced before. He could count on one hand the times Phil got so angry he yelled at Dan, but he didn't think embedding his fist through the living room wall was synonymous for angry. He was livid, as bright as the colour vermilion and the word 'anger' didn't do Phil's emotion justice.

"What do you mean?" Dan asked him, too afraid to scream back 'what the fuck did you just do?!'. He didn't want to go closer his friend, didn't want to move because the next thing he did would depicted exactly how this situation would unfolded. If he stepped right, spoke right, breathed right, Phil would be fine. This sometimes happened, Dan reminded himself. It had been happening for a couple month now, and though it was Phil's mess, he knew how to deal with it the way Phil couldn't.

"If you think I'm so inadequate, and such a fucked-up parent, why don't you leave? Take her with you and get the fuck out of here! I don't need either of you, and you sure as hell are fine alone!" Phil shouted, his voice drowning out through the apartment, through the hole in the wall that opened up to show the messy insides of cracked plaster, broken insulation and tangled cords. It looked a little like how Dan's mind felt, probably more than that.

"I didn't say that, Phil." Dan soothed, and he knew they needed help. Phil would twist his words, Dan's language would turn against him – Phil would make it poisonous. Whether he did it consciously or not, didn't matter. Dan didn't think so, and he wasn't sure which was worse: the art of knowing how to turn the sun into an excruciating burning flame of fire, or not realising when the star had become so painful. "I'm just worried, okay?"

He wouldn't dare say 'for you', as that implies there's a problem, that Phil needed help because he was broken. Perhaps he is, yes, Dan knows he is – but to Phil it's as if the world is broken, that life was the one to flip upside down and everyone in it is isolated from himself.

"I'm wanting to know if you're alright, that's all." Dan whispered, and maybe he was terrified. "If – if you're not, that's okay, too."

"Don't – don't say that! I'm the same as I've always been, I'm the same! You – y-you're the one –!" He screamed, eyes darting behind Dan, to the kitchen bench, to the mirror, and it occurred to Dan that Phil wasn't entirely talking to him. Like the sun setting in the dusk over the horizon line slowly but indefinitely, it dawned on Dan that Phil was too repetitive, too frantic to be talking to Dan alone. His body shook, like it was fighting itself, his mind at war with his body and Phil was hyperventilating in their kitchen.

"Phil," Dan said slowly, holding his arms out as if approaching the person in front of him was dangerous. It was, in ways – or maybe not 'in ways' and it just  _was_. "Something is wrong. If you let me, I can help you, okay?"

"Shut up!"

Wrong move. If this was a game, he had chosen the wrong option. The screen would have shook, maybe one of his five hearts that represented a life would've broken and became empty instead of vibrant ruby, and he would've lost a life, could've died. But this wasn't a game. Phil wasn't programmed, and Dan couldn't understand him the way he always had before. He wasn't a character that, making the wrong choice, made him lose points. Phil was his best friend that, if he fucked this all up, Dan would lose it all.

"Okay, okay." Dan told him, voice as low and soft as he could manage it in the moment. It juxtaposed Phil's heavy, uneven breaths that sounded awful in the air that he couldn't take in, through lungs that wouldn't work. Dan took one step forward, not enough to really qualify as 'walking' but enough to make Phil feel like vermilion again.

There were shards of glass on the floor, bursting into thousands of multicoloured fragments that once resembled a vase, and Dan dove back to avoid the pieces being hurled at his feet.

"Just stop!" Phil screamed at him, looking at Dan – only at Dan – as if the world was coming crashing down. For an outsider – God help them if anyone was watching or listening – it would've seemed like it was only the vase. For Dan and for Phil it was their life, their home, their sanity, and just about everything they'd built together from the time they'd met each other, to this very second was plummeting downwards onto the glass-covered hardwood floor.

Dan didn't say anything at all, but he knew he should. His mind told him to scream back, to fight for what Phil and himself were losing. His ears had that feeling that gave intense pressure on the sides of his head where he felt like there  _should_  be screaming, and hyperventilating, and crying, and shattering, and an explosion of whatever this was –

– But Dan only heard Quinn, and he didn't know what to make on it. She was hungry, or she was wet, or she wanted him, or she heard her parents destroying themselves three walls away.

"I-I need to – I'm going to check on Quinn." Dan choked out, his throat closing up and his eyes didn't feel right. He felt nauseous, he was going to throw up. And Phil just stood in the kitchen, finally walking through the broken glass and leaving a trail of splotchy blood droplets on the floor all the way to their bathroom.

* * *

Sometimes things happened. Sometimes his heartbeat defied itself, and he bled from the dying euphoria that sometimes shadowed love.

But this wasn't dropping from the hights of bittersweet escape; it's was like falling from the devotion of two souls that were his whole God-damned universe. It was falling out of love with two bound souls intertwined with his, and he expected it to hurt. If the three of them were falling, they were all destined to smash into a million unfixable pieces like the crystal vase, and it was him who had pushed them off the clifftop when he jumped and Dan – holding onto three lives all at once – grabbed ahold and they plummeted tangled in each other's limbs. Phil fought to let go and Dan fought for their lives.

And somehow he felt nothing. He was ruining everything he ever had, and it didn't feel like the universe in that very moment. Phil wasn't sure if sitting on the bathroom floor with fifteen more pills than he needed in his dead hands was supposed to feel terrifying or chaotic or like ecstatic rhapsody, but it wasn't supposed to feel like his. He was supposed to want to exist. He needed to be there for the flesh and blood he and Dan had created. He was supposed to love the people he had made a life with  _infinitely_  – the word humanity can't comprehend and the emotion people have a concept for, but never do experience alone. But he was so far gone, the coldness he felt was apathy, and suddenly the universe was worth nothing at all.

He wanted to hate himself – he had tried – but Phil was too tired for that, and the nothingness he would feel when he wasn't alive seemed better than the nothingness he felt when he was awake. But then again, the heart of the problem was that he didn't feel anything at  _all_  either way.

He contemplated if yelling at Dan was worth it, if smashing the wall in and throwing the vase at his feet to feel  _something_  meant anything at all. When he did it, all he felt was the ache of his hand as his bones were crushed from the impact, or how his feet now stung from the little pieces of glass.

It didn't even feel like hate, now that he'd had a second to process what he'd just done.

It felt like the  _end_. They started with nothing but shy 'hello's and needy kisses, and went out with an explosion: literally of shattered glass, and broken drywall, and a handful of antidepressants that weren't even his own – or at least that's what Phil's story was. Dan's version of things probably started with needing a savior, with desperation, and somehow Phil was twisted into that damaged picture. Along the way, it became a little more than that and neither of them needed saving, until they thought already were. They'd manage to keep their heads above the water until it got deep, and hot, and then they realised they couldn't swim. They had morphed into something meaningless, and they kept the aspect of a relationship that they shouldn't have, and abandoned absolutely everything else.

And now Phil was getting rid of it all, still fumed heavily on the psychotic, demented, damaged conversation that mirrored this fucked up connection he had to someone and a relationship that neither of them needed.

The knock at the wooden door, and the reverberating sounds through the thin walls weren't heard over the pounding of his heartbeat, and the rattling of pills pouring into his hands meant to  _stop_  the lively beating.

_Thump, thump, thump._

There were over 20 capsules in his hand, he counted. That had to be a least 3000mg of sero–...  _sero_ -what-ever-the-fuck-it-was, right? Was that a lot? Was 3000mg not enough and he'd end up vomiting them back up, or would it leave him in a catatonic state where he wouldn't be able to wipe his own ass, or would this actually maybe fix what was broken in him?

 _'Prescription Medication for D. Howe–'_ yeah, yeah, yeah would this kill him though? ' _Keep out of reach of–'_ that didn't matter.  _'Do not take while pregnant–'_ he should've done this months ago.

"Phil?...  _Phil!_ "

Dan was there? Why was he here? Everything was now ruined, but then again, it always had been.

"Phil, open the door! What are you doing?!"

Dan said it in a way that Phil realised he wasn't asking. Dan knew it all. It was like he could see through the drywall, through Phil's mind. It was fucking terrifying, how he listened from the outside in and just  _knew_  that Phil was doing something so evil he didn't want to believe it.

"Leave me alone! Go away!" He shouted, shooting up from the floor to check and re-lock the door twice.

"Phil, open the fucking door, or I'll break it!" Dan's voice ricocheted through his head and the headache that seared behind his eyes made it suddenly impossible to see straight. The world was fuzzy, and blurry and he was shivering. Everything he understood about himself had been slipping away – no  _disintegrating_  – for the past year and now the physical sense of it all was catching up with the rest.

Dan's fists clashed from outside the bathroom door. He hadn't heard anything like this before. Dan wasn't ever angry enough to smash walls or hit doors in – he was good and untainted, unlike Phil. Even when they fought every other day  for a year, it never got to the point either of them smashed their hands against a door to break inside... it never got to a point either of them threatened to overdose either.

Phil backed away from the door, like he was sure it would implode inside the bathroom. "Just stop!"

And suddenly the metal that connected the wooden door and the frame exploded against the force of Dan's body colliding against it. The younger boy didn't feel the purple and blue pain in his shoulder and side litter with watercolour bruises. The screams in his conscience yelling inaudible phrases were indecipherable, but they added fire to the flame that kept his rush of horrified energy alive. The high of adrenaline made him feel invincible, and the only thing that could ever hurt Dan were the pills in Phil's palm, and even then, they weren't about to be shoved down Dan's own throat, were they?

It was like walking into a crime screen. He could already see the blood from months ago stain the tiles, he could see it all over Phil's body, over his own skin when he tried to hold the other boy in his lap. It was a repeat, but instead of blood, the vital substance that held the power of life were serotonin pills. They were held clenched in Phil's palm like his blood had been coated all over Dan's the morning of Quinn's birth.

Phil froze as the silver lock shattered against the tiles like bullet casings dropping with each fire of a revolver. Dan leapt at him immediately and Phil balled his fists around the happiness-filled bottle while he shoved Dan back out the door. Something about being caught doing the worst thing he's ever done to someone made him fight back harder as if Phil could erase the last three seconds of Dan's memory by pushing him out of the bathroom, slamming the door shut again, or throwing his entire weight into Dan so the other was so stunned he forgot what was actually happening.

What was actually happening? Phil thought about it for half a second before his head pounded and erupted with white-noise; he didn't notice his skull ever banging against the door frame, but somehow it did.

 _What_ is _happening?_

Phil was leaving because it was his choice and his life, and Dan didn't want to accept it the way Phil had. Or Phil was tearing his throat red, screaming furious, twisted words towards the love of his life, begging to have permission to die, and Dan had shoved him against the vanity, unable to look at his own reflection because angry, hurt tears streamed down his own face as he tried to stop an attempted suicide. An attempted suicide.

"Get the fuck off me!" Phil screamed, pushing his fists against Dan's shoulders and using everything he had in him to get Dan's hands away from his waist, pinning him to the countertop. As Phil shoved him back, Dan stumbled, his back hitting the opposite-facing wall from Phil, and though he didn't have a plan of what to do now, Phil just decided he didn't want to hurt Dan anymore than he already had tonight. Phil's fingers ached to collect the scattered remains of the capsules, turning away from Dan and hunching in on himself to hide what he was doing. From the mirror, Dan came up from behind him and wrapped his arms around Phil's body, reaching to snatch the pills.

"Let go! Just let  _go_! Fucking leave me alone! Get the fuck out!" Phil screamed again, twisting his body as Dan held him trapped. His elbowed hit Dan in the ribs and he liked to believe it wasn't on purpose, but it was just another reason why Phil should die.

Perhaps Phil wasn't as strong enough, or Dan's body was so alive with adrenaline he didn't notice the impact to his chest, but Dan didn't react other than trying to take what might as well be a gun from Phil's hand. "Phil, let go of the bottle!"

"No! No, just let me! I need it!" Phil begged and kicked and trashed around Dan, but the other boy wasn't going anywhere. Neither was Phil, he believed. The tears had mixed with snot down his face and Dan realised they were both crying. It wasn't pretty, it was devastating – this was traumatic, and they were sobbing as they fought to grab ahold of the thing that resembled everything. His face was against Phil's head, he could smell the brilliant scent of his hair, feel the softness of the stands, and Dan loved it to much he cried.

"I won't let you do this!" Dan screamed back, and Phil felt like a burden in his arms. It was comfort and safety that he didn't deserve.

"Not your decision to make!"

"And it's not yours! Don't you fucking dare, Phil! What happens to Quinn, huh?! Or to your family. Don't do this to them, don't do this to  _me_! I need you so badly, Phil! Ten years, a fucking decade! I can't not have you in my life – you can't not exist in life! For me–"

"I don't care!" Phil spat, fighting against Dan's hold to get away. The other wasn't much taller, but he was stronger – where Phil was empty-muscled and alarmingly underweight, Dan was slightly healthier (even if neither resemble their year-ago selves at all). He used whatever he had to stop Phil thrashing violently in his arms. If the grip was crushing Phil, it wasn't what the other was reacting to.

"You can't just say 'what about me?' and expect me to care! Seriously, I feel nothing! I don't fucking care about you!  _I_  get to decide, not you! I get to fucking choose! So – you're not... I don't want you! I can't –... I know this fucked up, but it'll work!"

Dan wasn't taken aback, and when the younger spoke, he didn't stutter. He was so entranced in the moment that the instinctual parts of his brain took over, and all he knew how to do was try and save Phil's life. They fell in love, more so, Dan fell towards Phil, and the only reason he was still breathing instead of lying smashed into a million pieces on the concrete ground was because Phil caught him. Now he'd repay his life's debt to the person he owed his heart to.

"So this is your solution?"

"Maybe it's not a fucking good one, but at least it'll be better than staying in whatever-the-fuck kind of limbo I'm living in right now!" It was almost like a mathematical equation in Phil's head. If he wasn't here, it wouldn't hurt. Perhaps Quinn would start sleeping for more than a few hours a day, maybe she'd stop screaming during the night, and one thing was for sure, she wouldn't have to grow up knowing one of her fathers didn't love her. Dan would realise Phil had fucked up the past ten years – his entire adult life – and, one day, be thankful that Phil was doing what we was doing. He wondered if that made sense, and somehow he knew that he'd be the only person to understand.

"Dying is not going to solve anything, so put them down and let me help you." Dan said, his voice testing the limits of how far he could push Phil to calm down, and  _really think about this._  Dan prayed for the first time in his life that what this is, was irrational, hasty and Phil being a stupid fucking idiot because he was too lost to think of a better way of coping.

"Just being around you makes me feel like I can't fucking breathe sometimes! I can't love you! I can't do it anymore, I can't do that to  _you_  anymore. I'm fucked up, and I can't keep hurting you!" 

Dan's arms around Phil's body faulted, he could feel his mind slipping from the present and back into times he could never decide if he wanted to forget of if they were the best days of his life.

"Just stop, and we can work through this! Please, Phil." He'd never felt so intertwined with someone like this before. Their bodies feverish, breathes aligned and minds corrupted by love and something that opposed it.

"You wouldn't help me unless you'd want to drown in the ocean of relentlessly wanting to die and smothering emptiness that is my head!"

_It was impossible to grab ahold of something as equality as mortal as himself and not let it down too._

"I can help you, please let me help you!"

_Phil was wrong._

"I don't want your help!"

"But you need it! Do you even remember what you used to feel like? You were  _ecstatic_  with life, Phil. God, you made me want to be happy, you made me want to  _matter_  – to exist. It was like – you were the whole fucking sun and sky, and everything in between. –"

"– I know something's happened in you. But it doesn't matter what's changed, just let me help you  _feel_  again, please. Like you did for me. You're not broken – you're still you, you're just lost somewhere. But please give yourself the chance to be happy again, feel love again – even if it's not for me. I'm begging you, put the pills down, and look at me. Do realise what you're doing? You're trying to kill yourself, Phil."

" _I_   _know_!" He screamed, but the earth around their senses seemed so quiet. By the end of Dan's string of heavy words, the younger boy had been whispering. Phil seemed afraid, like if he said something too loud it would break what tranquility was left in the world – yes, it  _had_  to be it was out there, somewhere.

Phil eyes scrunched up the way they had the night in the bathroom, the night of Quinn's birth. Dan couldn't see as the other boy had buried his head in Dan's arms that still held his body, but he felt droplets of wetness on his forearm and knew Phil was crying. Wailing, more like it – it was agonising. They started as hurt whimpers, yet erupted into to sobs, choking on his gasps and he sounded the closest to death Dan's ever heard someone's sound. Considering the circumstance it was truely accurate on more than just a physical level.

"W-What am I-I doing?!" Phil cried, his fist unclenching, dropping the capsules, and they scattered all over the tiles. He wrapped his own arms around himself, clawing at his skin, collapsing to the floor, and bringing Dan down with him in a sudden crash against the cold marble. "I-I don't w-want to die!"

"I know," Dan had yet to let go, and he wouldn't until the day death really did do them part (which wouldn't be any-fucking-time soon). He clutched Phil tighter, nestling his warm head on Phil's neck and felt the other lean into his hair. Dan's rocked him back and forth, back and forth, for an hour, the same way he would've done for Quinn, and stayed there until he knew Phil was asleep. "I know."

He was tired.

His ass was sore, legs numb and his chest hurt from being bashed into, but he decided it was the most perfectly, lovable kind of blissful ache he'd ever had.

Dan promised to nobody but the air and the watercolours of 4AM, when Phil opened his eyes again, he would be glad he did.


End file.
